Mission Statement:
Claiming Williams invites the community to acknowledge and understand the uncomfortable reality that not all students, staff, and faculty can equally “claim” Williams. By challenging the effects of the College’s history of inequality that are based on privileges of class, race, gender, sexuality and religion, we will provoke individual, institutional, and cultural change.
Purpose:
This day is an opportunity to come together as a community – faculty, students, staff, administrators, and guests – to assess critically our campus behaviors as well as the values and standards that undergird them. The Claiming Williams Project is a response to an archive of unacceptable structural and cultural conditions and behaviors occurring within the Williams community over time that too often go invisible and overlooked on our campus. During this day, we interrupt the usual academic schedule to bring the entire campus together for interactive workshops, discussions, speakers, and performances aligned with our mission statement.
Invitation:
Although a single day is not sufficient to change habits and ways of thinking, the magnitude of February 4, 2010 rests in its ability to engage the campus in an ongoing dialogue about how these unexamined issues disrupt community. We hope you will be intrigued by one or more events of the day.
Date: Thursday, February 4, 2010
